January 04, 2016

This is not an attack!! It is a warning! We now live in a time when something that is 5 years old is called “vintage”. And if your computer is 7 or more years old, you and it are obsolete.

Apple defines vintage products as those that have not been manufactured for more than five and less than seven years ago, while obsolete products are those that were discontinued more than seven years ago.”

To me the word “vintage” means old and outmoded (except for wine). Just because something isn’t as fancy as the newest tech doesn’t mean its outmoded. A fax machine is outmoded, not a 5 year old computer.

I have a Compaq Presario CQ56 laptop which is 6 years old. It is running Linux Mint 17.2 operating system. I use it all the time and its great. It runs so well I’m going to upgrade it to a SSD hard drive. I would in no way describe it as “vintage” or outmoded. It does its job very nicely, as a matter of fact, it runs better now than it did when new.

The Linux operating system uses less resources than the original Windows 7 operating system it came with did. It already boots faster than a 1.5 year old Asus laptop running Windows 8. When I install the Solid State Drive it will be vastly faster than when new.

Danger of Vintage!

This trend to call things a few years old as vintage or obsolete is, in my eyes, dangerous. It breeds excessive consumerism. It devalues performance, durability and upgradability. If we blindly buy new products because we are told what we have is vintage, we incentivize manufactures to build things that will have shorter and shorter lives.

The goal of modern technological advances should not be shorter lived products. With more knowledge, better materials, and sophisticated design we should be building products that last longer and run better.

Apple makes an amazing product, that is not the issue. The issue is the philosophy of what is vintage or obsolete. I have a Mac G5 Pro that is 10 years old and it runs great! But according to Apple it is obsolete. It might just be simple verbiage they use, but words matter, words have meaning. They can be used to build a mind set.

It was not that long ago that we, as American consumers valued durability and longevity in what we purchased. I fear we have been swayed by powerful forces to value the latest, the newest, the shiny sparkly things the most. We do this at our own peril.